We are currently undergoing updates to our site and are working to improve your experience on all devices that you use throughout your day. If you should find a page or a story that is not working correctly, please click here.

Thank you for your patience,

TribLIVE.com Team

Standing at the edge of the extended-term parking lot at Pittsburgh International Airport on Thursday night, Mark Parker glanced at a license plate, keyed it into his handheld computer and moved to the next one.

Without breaking stride, he walked from car to car recording plates. Elsewhere among more than 13,000 parking spots at the airport, Dennis Blanc was doing the same.

“We go by every car in this lot each night,” said Blanc, 41, of Weirton, W.Va., an employee of Grant Oliver Corp., the company that manages the parking lots at the airport. A team of three can do the job in two to five hours.

That night, 8,106 cars, trucks and vans were parked at Pittsburgh International Airport. Parker and Blanc know. They entered the plates of every one into a database their company maintains.

The database helps travelers find misplaced cars, and police use it to crack unsolved crimes. Some travelers said they didn't realize license plates were logged each night while they're out of town on vacation or business.

“It doesn't bother me,” Erin Brown, 20, of Morgantown, W.Va., said of the airport tracking her license plate. “But I can understand how people could be wary.”

Fred Miller, 55, of North Versailles was skeptical about the effort's effectiveness. If they do not remember where they parked, chances are good they do not remember their license plate numbers.

“Who else do they share (the information) with?” he asked.

Dave Paga, Grant Oliver's manager, said that outside of law enforcement agencies, the database is rarely shared. Someone has to prove in person they own the car before details are shared, Paga said.

“We've found cars out there. I'm not going to deny that we did,” Allegheny County police Inspector David Walsh said. “We have found vehicles from kids that have run away from home. We've found vehicles that have been used in the commission of a crime. And we've found stolen vehicles.”

Company cars have been abandoned in the lot by employees who drove to the airport to catch a flight to a new job with no intention of returning. One man left his car in short-term parking for a year. His parking fee topped $2,000, and he paid it, said Dave Knight, a night supervisor with Grant Oliver.

“A lot of times they don't know their car is here,” Knight said. “Their wife recently left them, and she took off from here.”

The practice is common at airports across the country. Airports in Cleveland, St. Louis, Cincinnati, New Orleans, Baltimore and Tampa record license plate numbers. Some use video cameras.

In Pittsburgh, Grant Oliver uses the data to help travelers locate their vehicles or determine how long they parked and how much they owe if they lose their tickets, Paga said.

“We're sort of unsung heroes,” said Parker, 50, of the North Side. “The data we collect each night is pretty valuable.”

Vehicles left in the lot for 45 days are reported to county police, who check to find out whether they're stolen. Grant Oliver and police try to contact the owners when that time is reached.

Walsh said crime at the airport's parking lots is rare and so is connecting parked cars to crimes.

Dan Amman, 51, of Dormont, a Grant Oliver maintenance worker, recalled when police found $500,000 in the trunk of a car used by an ATM thief who fled Pittsburgh from the airport. He apparently could not take all his cash with him, Amman said.

The bullet-riddled body of Joseph DeMarco, a racketeer under investigation for his involvement in a massage parlor connected to prostitution and drug activities, was found in 1979 stuffed into the trunk of a car parked at the old Greater Pittsburgh International Airport. Airport police became suspicious of the car because it remained parked in short-term parking for several days, according to news reports.

You are solely responsible for your comments and by using TribLive.com you agree to our
Terms of Service.

We moderate comments. Our goal is to provide substantive commentary for a general readership. By screening submissions, we provide a space where readers can share intelligent and informed commentary that enhances the quality of our news and information.

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderating decisions are subjective. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. Because of the volume of reader comments, we cannot review individual moderation decisions with readers.

We value thoughtful comments representing a range of views that make their point quickly and politely. We make an effort to protect discussions from repeated comments either by the same reader or different readers

We follow the same standards for taste as the daily newspaper. A few things we won't tolerate: personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence, proselytizing and SHOUTING. Don't include URLs to Web sites.

We do not edit comments. They are either approved or deleted. We reserve the right to edit a comment that is quoted or excerpted in an article. In this case, we may fix spelling and punctuation.

We welcome strong opinions and criticism of our work, but we don't want comments to become bogged down with discussions of our policies and we will moderate accordingly.

We appreciate it when readers and people quoted in articles or blog posts point out errors of fact or emphasis and will investigate all assertions. But these suggestions should be sent
via e-mail. To avoid distracting other readers, we won't publish comments that suggest a correction. Instead, corrections will be made in a blog post or in an article.